We've released a hotfix (Alpha 1.11.50) to our default branch on Steam. You can find our patch notes below. Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu. In case you missed it, the full v1.11 update can be viewed here.
We’ll be releasing our 1.11 branch directly to stable today. A lot has gone into 1.11 and we want to get it tested by as many people as possible right off the bat, so here you have it. There are quite a few new additions to the world and to gameplay. We’ll go over those below and include the full changelog right here in the update.
We will be wiping servers and suggest all private servers owners do so also. As you know, we try to avoid wipes as often as possible. A lot of changes have gone into 1.11, items have been renamed and recipes adjusted among other factors like home setting, etc. It's best to have a nice clean start with major updates.
Self Defense and PvP Improvements
The PVP system has needed some love and it’s getting attention now. The introduction of the sleeping bag and home claiming system introduced a few issues and we’ll be addressing them in 1.11
Self Defense We have wanted to work out some kind of a who shot first system for quite some time now. The next version will introduce a basic self defense system. Players will have a set amount of time (currently 2 minutes) to return fire without penalty. This obviously only works if you’ve been hit first. This system also changes when taking home status into effect as explained below.
Structure Defense The initial reason for this change was to stop players placing sleeping bags and using them to grief other players. There’s a need for a more advanced system but this is a great base to work from and should solve many of the initial issues.
It is now possible for players to protect their own home under any circumstance (without mental health impact) providing the player is inside their home. Homes are now considered to ‘age out’ meaning any home that has been set for more than 12 in game hours. A long standing home was extra right over a home that has just been placed. In the event a placed home is new and not older than 12 hours, that player will face a cool down to respawn.
This isn’t a fail safe solution by any means. Should an attacker age out of a home, placing a bag and making it 12 hours without it being destroyed they will be able to respawn and attack without negative effect. This could basically create a PVP free-for-all if you’re both in your houses shooting across the gardens. This, of course, would only work if you were both in your structures once outside the system reverts to the who shot first system above.
Example of the System Player 1 is in their home and protecting their aged base (their real home that’s been there for a while). Player 2 places a home near player 1’s base and intends to use it to exploit by attacking player 1 over and over. Previously player 1’s mental health would deteriorate as player 2 could just keep respawning at their home and attacking player 1. This effectively left player 1 helpless, not able to protect their base without suffering from negative mental health effects and eventually committing suicide. With the new system, providing player 1's base is aged out, they have the right to kill on sight anyone attacking them (regardless of who fires the first shot) without consequence. In the event player 2 gets killed by player 1, they are placed on timeout to spawn at home, in the event their home is close to player 1’s. If player 2’s home isn’t close then they are allowed to spawn at home as per normal gameplay.
Waypoint System
The vibe of Survive the Nights is really starting to come into its own. 1.11 will feature a totally revamped spawn system. As mentioned in the last devblog, the new system will randomly spawn players in structures around the world. This really makes every life and experience unique. Spawning in houses in towns vs spawning in a country house creates a wide variety of gameplay experiences. Along with the new spawning system, James has spent some time improving and expanding on the quick guides’ abilities and features. New players have a far more task oriented start. The game really is starting to feel like a game with these recent changes. The original ‘hunker down’ vibe is coming back into its own and guiding the player from the start is a big part of our intended gameplay style. The waypoint system and new help system is meant to gently guide new players in the right direction. It can be fully disabled for returning players and is automatically disabled even for returning players after completion.
Waypoint directing the player towards a wood harvest
Item Highlighting Improvements
Item and harvest highlighting has recently been introduced and James has made some improvements to the system. Current highlighting on harvest machines stays even after you’ve harvested the times from it even if it’s ‘empty’.. The updated system will now remove the glowing effect from empty harvest machines making it far easier to distinguish what you have and haven’t harvested. We'll have some more info in next week's devblog.
Friends on Map and Compass
We’ve always wanted Survive the Nights to be a co-op experience. Surviving with friends is a totally different experience than surviving on your own. We introduced the home system in 1.10 allowing players to set their homes. This feature itself allows for a more cooperative experience. We’ve taken it a step further with the 1.11 update by adding the much requested ability to see your friends on the map. In 1.11, players will be able to see any of their Steam friends on the map. This should work without the need for you to do anything in game so long as you’re Steam friends. In addition to seeing your friends when you bring up the map, they will also be visible when you inspect your player and bring up the compass UI.
Friend locations on the map
Friend locations on the compass
Structure Variant (Car Lots)
A vehicle makes survival a lot easier and we would like to get players driving around sooner rather than later. We will be making some adjustments to the guide systems including the task to get a vehicle started. This task will now waypoint players to the new car lot additions on the island. These car lots as mentioned above are spread across the map and there are currently 6 variants although you might not notice much difference initially. We will expand on structure design later, our prefab system allows us to swap out any structure in the game or just make general improvements and changes without issue for the most part.
Black Island Impound Lot
New Impound/Dealership Locations
Patch Notes - Alpha 1.11
Quality of Life (QoL)
Vehicles will now be more common and start with slightly more parts
Increased the size of the cooking surface on the hearth
Sleeping bag recipe now only requires 2 cloth.
Player now start a new life after respawning when not having a home set.
Searched wood/metal/cloth items now indicate that they cannot be searched again.
It’s now possible to equip while in the UI for other machines/looking at cooking surfaces.
Fixed issue that was stopping stewing working correctly.
Increased visible distance of various large/important pickups so that they don't pop on right in front of the player.
Fixed scenarios where machines continued to run after the player left the area.
Optimisations to vegetation rendering.
Pre-warm assets system disabled to fix possible crash issues on startup and improve performance when entering menus/game
Canteens no longer spawn.
New Players
Now spawn inside a structure
Guide order tweaked to work better with new spawn locations.
Solo/Hosting
Solo play now has a disclaimer explaining additional RAM requirements.
Fixed issues that stopped certain player getting into game on solo play.
Added a button to test port status on host tab.
Added warning to host tab that lets players know ports are still closed.
Fixed issues that stopped solo/host servers launching.
Waypoints
Added dynamic waypoint system that guides the player to their next objective.
Self Defense
Added self defense system that allows you to kill a player in the event that they initiate combat.
It’s now possible to destroy other players sleeping bags.
It’s now possible to kill other players while defending home without mental health impact.
There is now a cool down on home respawning in circumstances considered to be exploiting.
Animation
Fixed various scenarios where it was possibly to see extra hands while consuming.
Design
Town sign achievements now work.
Fixed flickering snow on and off when moving around the world
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 13 on the north east corner of the map.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 43 on the north east corner of the map.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 42 north of sage creek
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 15 west of Oldtown.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 45 north of airport.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 62 south of Addersfield.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 53 west of Addersfield.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 56 west side of Black Rock.
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 52 north Addersfield
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 57 on the north east corner of the map.
Added a dealership to terrain tile 28
Added a dealership to terrain tile 26
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 10 north of Union Point
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 35 west of Sage Creek
Added Car Dealership to terrain tile 55 north of Black Rock
Added Car Impound Lot to terrain tile 59 north of Addersfield
Improved water materials on ponds
Added car dealership and variants.
Lighting
Adjusted nighttime lighting for easier navigation
Increased lights from fires indoors
Decreased light from club when it’s on fire
Disabled running animation when flashlight is enabled on a gun
Disabled LED flashlights + windup flashlight
Increased brightness and range of normal flashlights
Removed weird grill shadow from fixed campfire
Fix for flashlight colour not updating when removing flashlight attachment
Fix for weapon not going back to passive carry position when headlamp is enabled
UI
Updated pre-alpha warning message and reduced skip time
Reworded new life UI to better reflect new spawn locations.
Tweaked wording for fire elements of guide.
Added friend position on map and compass within a close proximity
Sniper scopes now render behind other UI so that it doesn't hide other important information.
Added indicator if zombies are nearby to logoff menu.
Item thats just been crafted now selects in the inventory.
PvP Exploit Improvements
Health clamp to 1 system made more lenient so that it doesn’t affect PvP as much.
No longer possible to place sleeping bags in POI’s.
Thank you for the continued support :) We’re working on issues you’re finding so please keep reporting any bugs and sharing your suggestions with us. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
Firstly, a preemptive happy Halloween to you all. We hope you have a fun and spooky weekend. We’ve been cracking along on the 1.11 build and making some pretty massive gameplay changes along the way.
Andre has continued making progress on prepping the new 1.12 zombies. Along with that, he’s altering, improving and removing some of our current zombies. He has recently started working on a random skin generator that promises to drastically improve zombie variation.
Animation additions and improvements continue to be made for 1.11. John’s working with a new model for the first time in quite a while and things are progressing quite nicely. We’re excited to eventually showcase more of the zombie introduction after 1.11 is released and we’re showcasing the 1.12 update.
I (JB) have spent my time in the last week or so introducing new design to the world in the form of car dealerships and impound lots. There are currently 6 variants of these scattered all across the island and we’ll likely update and refine the structures via our prefab system as we move through the development cycle and have more time and resources to dedicate to structure rebuilds. As of now these areas will serve the purpose of providing new and returning players alike a place to reliably find vehicles, vehicle parts and tools.
Self Defense and PvP Improvements
Yes, yes we hear you! James has begun implementing quite a few general PVP changes along with the changes made via your suggestions. The PVP system has needed some love and it’s getting attention now. The introduction of the sleeping bag and home claiming system introduced a few issues and we’ll be addressing them in 1.11
Self Defense We have wanted to work out some kind of a who shot first system for quite some time now. The next version will introduce a basic self defense system. Players will have a set amount of time (currently 2 minutes) to return fire without penalty. This obviously only works if you’ve been hit first. This system also changes when taking home status into effect as explained below.
Structure Defense The initial reason for this change was to stop players placing sleeping bags and using them to grief other players. There’s a need for a more advanced system but this is a great base to work from and should solve many of the initial issues.
It is now possible for players to protect their own home under any circumstance (without mental health impact) providing the player is inside their home. Homes are now considered to ‘age out’ meaning any home that has been set for more than 12 in game hours. A long standing home was extra right over a home that has just been placed. In the event a placed home is new and not older than 12 hours, that player will face a cool down to respawn.
This isn’t a fail safe solution by any means. Should an attacker age out of a home, placing a bag and making it 12 hours without it being destroyed they will be able to respawn and attack without negative effect. This could basically create a PVP free-for-all if you’re both in your houses shooting across the gardens. This, of course, would only work if you were both in your structures once outside the system reverts to the who shot first system above.
Example of the System Player 1 is in their home and protecting their aged base (their real home that’s been there for a while). Player 2 places a home near player 1’s base and intends to use it to exploit by attacking player 1 over and over.
Previously player 1’s mental health would deteriorate as player 2 could just keep respawning at their home and attacking player 1. This effectively left player 1 helpless, not able to protect their base without suffering from negative mental health effects and eventually committing suicide.
With the new system, providing player 1's base is aged out, they have the right to kill on sight anyone attacking them (regardless of who fires the first shot) without consequence. In the event player 2 gets killed by player 1, they are placed on timeout to spawn at home, in the event their home is close to player 1’s. If player 2’s home isn’t close then they are allowed to spawn at home as per normal gameplay.
Car Lots
A vehicle makes survival a lot easier and we would like to get players driving around sooner rather than later. We will be making some adjustments to the guide systems including the task to get a vehicle started. This task will now waypoint players to the new car lot additions on the island. These car lots as mentioned above are spread across the map and there are currently 6 variants although you might not notice much difference initially. We will expand on structure design later, our prefab system allows us to swap out any structure in the game or just make general improvements and changes without issue for the most part.
Black Island Impound Lot
Current Placement (Likely to change)
Halloween Event
The Halloween event is in full swing and will run until November 7th. You’ll notice Jack-O-Lanterns scattered around the world, a ‘Trick or Treat’ door knocker and the reintroduction of the feature length film "Night of the Living Dead." You can receive the film as a treat and load up the projector in either of the island's drive-in movie theaters. Below are two quick videos showcasing each of the Halloween event features.
Drive-In Film: Night of the Living Dead
Watch the full length movie right in the game. Find a film reel while trick or treating. You can take the reel to either of the drive-in theaters and play the movie via the projection room. Try and survive a couple of hordes while watching a classic film!
[previewyoutube="xa9Vk5b8U8c;full"]
Trick or Treating
You'll find most of the structures in the game will currently have decorations around the doorstep and a new door knocker. Use the door knocker once the sun sets for a trick-or-treat. Tricks aren't always fun but the treats should make killing them easier ;)
[previewyoutube="_LycL8WviH4;full"]
Halloween Sale - 40% Off
Survive the Nights is now 40% off for the Halloween Sale! You can also participate in our in-game Halloween event. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our discord and speak with the developers or players within our friendly community.
Survive the Nights is now 40% off for the Halloween Sale! You can also participate in our in-game Halloween event. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our discord and speak with the developers or players within our friendly community.
Devblog 55 - Halloween Event (Trick or Treating | Drive-In)
Hello everyone,
We're just posting a short blog today along with a quick update to enable the Halloween event. We’re still cracking along on the v1.11 build and we’ll have a nice devblog next Friday detailing exactly what we’re up to.
The Halloween event has started. You’ll notice Jack-O-Lanterns scattered around the world, a ‘Trick or Treat’ door knocker and the reintroduction of the feature length film Night of the Living Dead. You can receive the film as a treat and load up the projector in either of the island's drive-in movie theaters. Below are two quick videos showcasing each of the Halloween event features.
Drive-In Night of the Living Dead
Watch the full length movie right in the game. Find a film reel while trick or treating. You can take the reel to either of the drive-in theaters and play the movie via the projection room. Try and survive a couple of hordes while watching a classic film!
[previewyoutube="xa9Vk5b8U8c;full"]
Trick or Treating
You'll find most of the structures in the game will currently have decorations around the doorstep and a new door knocker. Use the door knocker once the sun sets for a trick-or-treat. Tricks aren't always fun but the treats should make killing them easier ;)
Thanks for the continued support :) If you're having issues in the game please report them via the F1 in game reporting system. We’ll see you next week for a more in depth discussion on 1.11 and the new features and improvements. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
Apologies for the lack of a devblog last week. We’ve been busy working on 1.11 features and content. As always, these blogs are just a small glimpse of what we’re actually doing so feel free to check out our changelog or jump on our Discord Server for more details.
Waypoint System
The vibe of Survive the Nights is really starting to come into its own. 1.11 will feature a totally revamped spawn system. As mentioned in the last devblog, the new system will randomly spawn players in structures around the world. This really makes every life and experience unique. Spawning in houses in towns vs spawning in a country house creates a wide variety of gameplay experiences.
Along with the new spawning system, James has spent some time improving and expanding on the quick guides’ abilities and features. New players have a far more task oriented start. The game really is starting to feel like a game with these recent changes. The original ‘hunker down’ vibe is coming back into its own and guiding the player from the start is a big part of our intended gameplay style.
The waypoint system and new help system is meant to gently guide new players in the right direction. It can be fully disabled for returning players and is automatically disabled even for returning players after completion.
Waypoint directing the player towards a wood harvest
Item Highlighting Improvements
Item and harvest highlighting has recently been introduced and James has made some improvements to the system. Current highlighting on harvest machines stays even after you’ve harvested the times from it even if it’s ‘empty’.. The updated system will now remove the glowing effect from empty harvest machines making it far easier to distinguish what you have and haven’t harvested. We'll have some more info in next week's devblog.
Friends on Map and Compass
We’ve always wanted Survive the Nights to be a co-op experience. Surviving with friends is a totally different experience than surviving on your own. We introduced the home system in 1.10 allowing players to set their homes. This feature itself allows for a more cooperative experience. We’ve taken it a step further with the 1.11 update by adding the much requested ability to see your friends on the map.
In 1.11, players will be able to see any of their Steam friends on the map. This should work without the need for you to do anything in game so long as you’re Steam friends. In addition to seeing your friends when you bring up the map, they will also be visible when you inspect your player and bring up the compass UI.
Friend locations on the map
Friend locations on the compass
Structure Variant
We’ll be doing quite a bit of additional design in the world and the in-betweens. One of those additions will be a small car dealership/warehouse variant, a gas station/dealership variant and a small impound lot. These new points of interest will be spread out nicely on the map and tie directly into the new guide and waypoint system. Players will carry the guide through the waypoint system directing them towards a dealership and, in return, the player should be able to get a vehicle going. Getting a vehicle going should help greatly when it comes to gathering supplies.
Black Island Impound
As always, thanks much for the continued support. We'll be working through community found issues and feedback and rely heavily on all of you reporting issues. If you're having issues in the game, please report them via the F1 in game reporting system. If you have some constructive feedback or gameplay ideas you'd like to share, please consider joining our Discord.
1.10 is out on our default branch as of last week and it seems to be doing well after a quick hot fix from the team. We’ve spent the last couple of days sorting out our 1.11 and 1.12 plans and they’re pretty big! This first blog basically lays out our game plan for the next update.
We plan on a quicker 1.11QoL/Halloween update in the next few weeks. This update will be the main focus of this quick devblog. The team will share greater details and expand on all the planned features as we work through the development cycle. We’re hoping to have this update out before Halloween.
1.10 featured some big changes to the early game experience, especially for new players. We spent a good deal of time working through player reported issues and we plan to carry that early game polish, feature tweaking and issue fixing through to 1.11.
PvP and Player Interaction Improvements
PvP was never our main focus, most following the project know that. We've always wanted Survive the Nights’ main threat to be zombie based. That being said, we have also always realized PvP is of course part of apocalyptic survival. We haven’t spent much time on the PvP interactions and 1.11 will change that. Below are some of our planned PvP changes. We will also be working on your reported PvP exploits and issues.
Sleeping bag issues Setting home and placing sleeping bags was introduced in version 1.10. This introduced some unique camping and respawn issues. We will be concepting and introducing a cool down system for respawns when being killed by PvP. This should balance player experiences nicely.
We will also introduce the ability to destroy other players' sleeping bags. The introduction will likely see this process take quite some time to accomplish. We’ll likely tweak once again based on your feedback.
Mental Health and Self Defense We have wanted to introduce a ‘who shot first’ style system on top of our mental health system for some time now. Version 1.11 will introduce the beginnings of a self defense system. The idea being those who are firing in self defense will receive little or possibly no negative mental health effects.
Player Interaction Improvements
Player Relevance Player to player interactions will get some attention in 1.11. We have made recent improvements to player relevancy and plan to continue fixing issues moving forward. Relevancy is a big part of a co-op game and we will do our best to get it 100% reliable.
Friends on the Map Survive the Nights has been developed to be a co-op experience. It’s easier to survive with friends around and the current system doesn’t always make this ideal. We’ve recently made big improvements to the map and the compass system. Players can now craft a compass and see a digital display when inspecting. This on screen compass shows the player icons like their home setting, death markers and horde direction. This along with the new set home feature has helped players group up and it shows in videos and player discussions.
We will be introducing what is essentially a friend system. This is the basics to a group system that will allow players to mark each other on their maps. So you should always know where your friends are making the co-op experience far more fun and fluid.
Improved Tutorial and Player Spawns
We have spent a lot of time developing our core mechanics. Our development really exploded shortly after our public alpha release in Nov 2019. From concept to that release we spent most of our time basically learning how to actually develop a game, run a business, interact with the community, etc.
We have tweaked and changed small game ideas but the general concept of Survive the Nights remains the same. We do realize however that some new players might not really know what that vision is. Survive the Nights’ concept featured a general theme, prepare during the day and hope to survive the night.
While developing the game we have slowly introduced all of our planned features and while most features from our concepts are now functioning, they can feel disjointed at times. We plan on getting back to our roots over the coming couple of update cycles.
We will be concepting a random spawn system that involves starting players directly in a structure somewhere on the map. This should add for a great deal of variety in gameplay experiences. This is something we’ve always intended to be a feature. You may spawn in a town, you may spawn on farm. This will drastically change how each new life and each survival situation plays out. This will also allow us the ability to easily expand on the quick guide checklist. We'll be showing players exactly how the game is intended to be played and walk them through the process from starting a fire and healing, to fortifying a structure and preparing for the nights onslaught.
This system will likely be in place for 1.11 and we’ll be expanding on the idea in 1.12. Introducing new traps, fortification options and general structure improvements. We’ll focus more on these improvements as we work through them in the coming weeks.
Flexible Waypoint System
1.10 introduced a new quick guide system for starting players. This system has a highlight feature that will showcase and illuminate the next item of interest on your quick guide. We will be expanding on this system, adding an on screen waypoint system to guide you to your next objective.
This system can be rather dynamic, allowing us to easily expand on game features like the guide. It will also allow us for future implementations like basic fetch quests or perhaps more elaborate ‘missions’.
Preparing for Zombie Improvements
Models The time has come. When we first started Survive the Nights, there weren’t a fabulous amount of amazing assets available. We had a 3rd party designer make most of our current zombie assets. A few of them are still original concept assets, I believe.
Times have changed and in big ways. There are some great small teams producing assets for unity and other engines at the moment. It seems insane to not take advantage of this fact and dive into model replacement.
Halloween Event
We had a ton of fun last year with the Halloween event. We’ll likely tweak that a bit and maybe add a few more goodies. It should be a great time for new players and returning players alike. We’ll be sure to get the film back into the project for the holiday and likely leave it in for those who wish to watch a movie in a game year round.. Below is the video we posted for last year's event. The world also featured a trick or treat event and the houses decorated with jack o' lanterns and such.
[previewyoutube="xa9Vk5b8U8c;full"]
This is not a simple process as you could imagine. We will spend the majority of the coming version importing, testing, tweaking and figuring out new assets. The process is time consuming and demands the whole team's attention. It’s not a process we’ve looked forward to to be honest but one we realize is needed and now that we’ve sat down and planned for it we’re very excited. You’ll not get any sneak peeks from us today though!
This short blog really only scratches the surface. There's a lot more to discuss and we’ll be bringing you progress updates every Friday until release. Once again, we hope to have this next Quality of Life update out before Halloween.
Special Promotion - 60% Off Sale Reminder
Survive the Nights is now 60% off until Thursday, October 7th. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.
Thanks for the continued support :) If you're having issues in the game please report them via the F1 in game reporting system. Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
We've released the hot fix (Alpha 1.10.46) to our default branch on Steam. You can find our patch notes below. Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu. In case you missed it, the full v1.10 update can be viewed here.
Patch Notes - Alpha v1.10.46 (Hot Fix)
Water now highlights again during quick guide.
Large cooking pot crafting recipe enabled.
Removed the help button/page from the crafting page as it's no longer needed.
Fixed jumping when pressing space to skip new life intro UI + added option to skip by clicking
Highlight right parts of the campfire in tutorial steps
Fix for zombies not being able to hit/open interior doors.
Fixed instances were the guide would incorrectly reset
Increased the size of the chat slightly.
Fix for Quick start UI staying on screen when getting disconnected from a server
Spelling mistake fixes in help tab and removed unused help
Tablist working
Name tags working.
Fixed issue where loot wasn't visible when playing with others.
Removed V from version readout in the server list so that new version format fits.
Reduced time before quick guide shows when joining a server.
Fixed scenarios which were stopping help videos playing.
Reduced jam times on M357, Rauser and Bateman hand guns.
We've released the hot fix (Alpha 1.10.45) to our default branch on Steam. You can find our patch notes below. Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu. In case you missed it, the full v1.10 update can be viewed here.
Patch Notes - Alpha v1.10.45 (Hot Fix)
Quick guide now restarts if death occurs during partial completion
New life UI now more consistent and only shows when starting at a campsite area.
Overall health description in the guide now fits.
Melee with guns help now only shows up when using a gun.
Survive the Nights is now on a limited time special promotion with 60% off for two weeks! This is our biggest sale to date. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.
